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Words Complete

Standard

That’s the term in novel writing when you finish your draft of the book you’re working on and are ready to start editing.
I was words complete last night on my latest, Recon: A War to the Knife and usually that makes me feel very satisfied. Kind of a combination of finishing a big project and taking the biggest dump ever.
I finished this one faster than any of my others, at around 2.5 months.
This time, though, all I could think about in the gaps between bursts of writing was the plot for the next book and trying to get it set up so I could start writing it as quickly as possible.
It kind of takes some of the fun out of writing when you have to treat it as a job and it’s certainly not the romantic vision of it that I had when I was in my 20s. I don’t know if that’s how the traditionally published authors with big contracts look at it, but as an indie author, that’s how you have to look at it if you want to make money.
But it’s still getting paid (and counting since I released Glory Boy in December, better paid than I ever have been before for any job) for doing something I love to do, so I cant really complain. If you’d told me 20 years ago, back when I had a literary agent and was collecting rejections from every major publisher, that tens of thousands of people would be reading books that I wrote, I would have laughed at the idea.

It does feel good to have a bit of success in the game after all this time, even if it may be only a fleeting moment.
We’ll see. Gotta’ get back to work.